FluidLab 0.1.37

Dither style, light overlays, open-edge fix

• Dither style (Style › Dither): the smoke as a print-style dither at Pixel Size. Patterns: Bayer 2×2 / 4×4 / 8×8, Blue Noise, Floyd–Steinberg and Atkinson. Levels sets how many tones there are, Tone From picks Brightness or Opacity, and Contrast / Brightness shape the tones before dithering. Ink can be a custom color or the smoke's own colors; Paper can be transparent or a color. Choose a palette in the Style group's Color menu to color the dither by tone. The ordered patterns hold steady on moving smoke; the error-diffusion patterns shimmer frame to frame.
• Light overlays: while FluidLab is selected, the comp window shows its lights: an icon for each light in its color, a spot light's aim line and cone where it meets the smoke, a point light's falloff radius, and the directional light's arrow in Light Position mode. Drag the crosshairs as before to move them.
• Fixed: wind from open edges. With Edges set to Open, air coming in through an edge kept the edge's own speed, so the inflow fed itself. A burst that blew out of an edge left the whole edge pulling air in faster every frame, and nearby smoke and fire shot away in separate puffs. Air now comes in still. Comps with open edges simulate somewhat differently than before.

Downloads

• macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon & Intel): FluidLab-0.1.37-mac.pkg
• Windows x64: FluidLab-0.1.37-win-setup.exe

The installers aren't signed yet. On macOS, right-click → Open, or on macOS 15+ use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. On Windows, choose SmartScreen's More info → Run anyway.

FluidLab 0.1.35

Outline style, custom fonts for ASCII

• Outline style (Style › Outline): draws a stroke around the smoke, where its opacity crosses Threshold, at Stroke Width px in Stroke Color. Turn on Fill to fill it, with a custom color or the smoke's own lit colors, at Fill Opacity. Raise Threshold for a tighter outline; lower it to include fainter wisps.
• Your own fonts in the ASCII style: set Font to Custom Font and click Choose Font File… to pick any .ttf, .otf or .ttc file. The font is saved inside the project, so it renders the same on any machine. Monospaced or not, each character is fitted and centered in its cell, and the character ramp is tuned to the font.
  • Adobe Fonts (synced through Creative Cloud) are protected files and can't be chosen. Some commercial font licenses restrict embedding fonts in files.

Downloads

• macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon & Intel): FluidLab-0.1.35-mac.pkg
• Windows x64: FluidLab-0.1.35-win-setup.exe

The installers aren't signed yet. On macOS, right-click → Open, or on macOS 15+ use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. On Windows, choose SmartScreen's More info → Run anyway.

FluidLab 0.1.34

Substeps

• Simulation › Substeps runs the simulation several times per frame. Use it when smoke blown off a fuel layer at a high Force comes out as separate puffs with gaps between them: 2–4 substeps usually turn it back into a continuous stream. The simulation takes that many times longer, so leave it at 1 (the default) on comps without fast jets. Changing it restarts the simulation, like Resolution.

Downloads

• macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon & Intel): FluidLab-0.1.34-mac.pkg
• Windows x64: FluidLab-0.1.34-win-setup.exe

The installers aren't signed yet. On macOS, right-click → Open, or on macOS 15+ use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. On Windows, choose SmartScreen's More info → Run anyway.

FluidLab 0.1.33

Lights and directional fuel

• Lights: up to three point or spot lights of FluidLab's own, in the new Lights group. Drag them around the comp with their crosshairs and keyframe them like any other setting. A spot light has a second crosshair, Point At, for where it aims. Each light has Height (how far in front of the smoke it sits), Intensity, Color, Cone, Feather, Falloff, Casts Shadows and Shadow Darkness.
• The directional light can aim from a point: set Lighting › Direction From to Light Position and drag the crosshair. The light then shines from that point toward the middle of the simulation.
• Directional fuel: turn on Directional in a Fuel group and the air under that layer blows one way, at the Force speed (px/s). Keyframe Force up for a few frames for a blast, or hold it for a steady jet.

Fixes

• Comp lights set to Falloff None no longer fade out past their Radius (they were treated as Smooth). Comps with such lights may look brighter farther from the light.

Changes

• Smoke Depth moved from Comp Lights into the new Lights group, since it now applies to both kinds of light. Projects keep their value.

Downloads

• macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon & Intel): FluidLab-0.1.33-mac.pkg
• Windows x64: FluidLab-0.1.33-win-setup.exe

The installers aren't signed yet. On macOS, right-click → Open, or on macOS 15+ use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. On Windows, choose SmartScreen's More info → Run anyway.

FluidLab 0.1.32

Comp light shadows, faster layer shadows

• Comp lights follow their own shadow settings. A light with Casts Shadows off (Light Options) now shines through the smoke and past shadow layers, and costs less to render. With it on, Shadow Darkness sets how dark its shadows are.
  • Heads-up: After Effects creates new lights with Casts Shadows off, so comp lights in existing projects may stop casting smoke shadows after this update. Tick Light Options › Casts Shadows on those lights to bring the shadows back.
• Layer Shadows render about twice as fast. Shadow-casting layers are now read at a lower resolution, which is plenty once Softness blurs them. Shadows look the same.

Downloads

• macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon & Intel): FluidLab-0.1.32-mac.pkg
• Windows x64: FluidLab-0.1.32-win-setup.exe

The installers aren't signed yet. On macOS, right-click → Open, or on macOS 15+ use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. On Windows, choose SmartScreen's More info → Run anyway.

FluidLab 0.1.31

GPU on Windows

• Compute: GPU (DirectX 11) on Windows. The simulation and the drawing can now run on the GPU on Windows too, as on the Mac. This is new and still being tested on real PCs, so CPU stays the default. It needs a GPU with Direct3D feature level 11.1 (NVIDIA, AMD and Intel GPUs from roughly the last ten years). If yours can't, FluidLab says so and keeps simulating on the CPU. The first GPU render compiles the GPU code once, which takes a few seconds.
• As on the Mac, GPU results differ very slightly from the CPU's and between GPU models. Use CPU when renders must match across machines or on a render farm.

Fixes

• Choosing Compute: GPU no longer writes past the end of After Effects' message buffer.

Downloads

• macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon & Intel): FluidLab-0.1.31-mac.pkg
• Windows x64: FluidLab-0.1.31-win-setup.exe

The installers aren't signed yet. On macOS, right-click → Open, or on macOS 15+ use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. On Windows, choose SmartScreen's More info → Run anyway.

FluidLab 0.1.30

Faster, and two fixes

Fixes

• Fire renders the same every time. With an Ignition Temperature above 0 (the default), fire comps simulated slightly differently on each render: a timing issue between threads. Renders are repeatable again, including with Multi-Frame Rendering and on render farms. Fire comps may look slightly different from 0.1.29.
• Compute: GPU no longer risks crashing After Effects when the pressure solve reaches its iteration limit.

Speed

• Drawing is 35–50% faster on the CPU, with exactly the same output. Fire-heavy comps gain the most.
• Compute: GPU now also draws on the GPU (lighting, shadows, flame light, glow and the realistic look), and the GPU simulation is 10–17% faster. A fire comp went from 58 ms to 23 ms per frame on an M4 Pro.

Windows

• The Compute option is hidden on Windows, which simulates on the CPU. Mac projects set to GPU open and render normally.

Downloads

• macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon & Intel): FluidLab-0.1.30-mac.pkg
• Windows x64: FluidLab-0.1.30-win-setup.exe

The installers aren't signed yet. On macOS, right-click → Open, or on macOS 15+ use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. On Windows, choose SmartScreen's More info → Run anyway.

FluidLab 0.1.29

Fixes

• Turbulence no longer builds up jets along the edges of the frame. With Turbulence on, the outermost rows and columns used to get a much stronger push than the rest of the frame. After a few seconds, smoke near the edges was pulled into fast, whipping filaments; bursts that throw dust to the edges showed it most. Open edges now let the turbulence carry across, and closed edges fade it out gradually toward the walls.

Comps with Turbulence on will look somewhat different from 0.1.28, mostly near the edges. Comps with Turbulence at 0 are unchanged.

Downloads

• macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon & Intel): FluidLab-0.1.29-mac.pkg
• Windows x64: FluidLab-0.1.29-win-setup.exe (beta: CPU only, little tested on Windows so far)

The installers aren't signed yet. On macOS, right-click → Open, or on macOS 15+ use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. On Windows, choose SmartScreen's More info → Run anyway.

FluidLab 0.1.28

First release

FluidLab is an After Effects effect that simulates smoke and fire, with your layers as fuel and colliders.

• Smoke from layers: three fuel slots plus a built-in emitter, colored by the layer or a custom color.
• Collisions: three collision slots; smoke flows around each layer's exact shape, and moving layers push it.
• Fire: burning fuel, ignition temperature, soot, flame light and glow.
• Bursts: keyframe a burst of smoke or dust out of a layer, for slams and impacts.
• Lighting: a directional light with self-shadowing, comp point/spot/parallel lights, and layer shadows.
• Stylized looks: ASCII (with the FluidLab Mono fonts), Dot, Grid, Pixel and Flow, with palettes and bloom.
• Variation: seed and turbulence.
• Compute: GPU (Metal) on macOS, opt-in. Results differ slightly from the CPU and between GPU models.

Downloads

• macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon & Intel): FluidLab-0.1.28-mac.pkg
• Windows x64: FluidLab-0.1.28-win-setup.exe (beta: CPU only, little tested on Windows so far)

The installers aren't signed yet. On macOS, right-click → Open, or on macOS 15+ use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. On Windows, choose SmartScreen's More info → Run anyway.